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The Nature of the Psychical

B. H. Bode

IN undertaking to discuss the topic selected by the committee for this
occasion I wish to take advantage of the enabling clause which states that "no
restriction is placed upon the freedom of participants in the discussion to
attack the general problem by any methods which seem to them suitable—
provided only that they establish some definite connection between their
contribution and the recent reflection of others upon the subject." The "recent
reflection of others" which I propose as my theme is the drift of neo-realistic
speculation towards behavior as the key to the mystery of consciousness, and my
special task will be an elaboration of the implications that seem to be
contained in this tendency or point of view.

(
289)

An approach to the problem of consciousness from the side of behavior is
confronted at the outset with the necessity of choosing between two alternative
modes of procedure. On the one hand, we may undertake to mark off the
significant and differentiating features of the behavior called conscious by
assigning to it a character that makes it qualitatively or generically different
from other forms of behavior. On the other hand, we may attempt to minimize or
rule out significant differences of this kind and attempt to place the
distinctiveness of conscious behavior in the kind or the range of objects to
which the organism responds. The latter mode of procedure is plainly involved in
Holt's doctrine that consciousness consists of a certain cross-section of the
environment, which is selected or marked off by a "specific response"of an
organism, the specific response being defined as "a reaction which is definably
distinct from its reaction to any other entity whatsoever.'' [2] Why the response in question is limited to the behavior of organisms
is not altogether clear, since the reaction on gunpowder to the spark or of the
anvil to the descending hammer would seem to be quite as specific as that of
living organisms. Waiving this question, however, we encounter the more serious
difficulty that the specific response apparently need not be a response to an
object at all. The specific response is no doubt a response to something,
but there is a significant difference between response to a mechanical
stimulation, such as ether-waves, and response to a perceived object. This
difference, it is evident, does not correspond to the distinction between the
agency immediately affecting the sense-organs and some other more remote agency
in the series of causes leading up to the final stimulation. To go back of the
immediate stimulation in the series of causes would lead into an infinite
regress, and any selection of a cross-section or set of objects as the object of
response would be purely arbitrary. Conscious behavior, in so far as it is
conscious, is not response to a causal agency at all. It is not response to
something that precedes the response in the temporal order, but is response to
an object or situation that is simultaneous with the response. The object of the
response is something now present, and not something of an earlier date. On the
other hand, the response, in a ease of mechanical reaction, appears to be a
response to a causal agency and nothing more. There is no response to an object,
as distinct from causal agency, save as an object is conveniently provided by an
obliging bystander. That is, the response to an object is to all appearances
quite different from the response of mechanical reaction, and it is precisely
this differ-

(
290) - ence which must be emphasized and defined if we are to obtain a
significant definition of conscious behavior.[3]

In support of the view that conscious behavior is of a distinctive kind it is
possible to cite statements by other neorealistic writers, though at the risk,
perhaps, of being reminded that even the devil can quote Scripture to his
purpose. "Content of mind," says Perry, "must be defined as that portion of the
surrounding environment which is taken account of by the organism in serving its
interests. "[4] In Marvin's language, "If
an animal's reaction can be accounted for wholly by the chemical-physical effect
of an object acting upon it, we should regard the reaction as a mere tropism. or
reflex. But if we could show that color, as color, or some relation between
color and things implied by color (e. g., a red flag as a sign of danger)
controlled the reaction, we should have to call it conscious."[5]
The statement that an organism. "serves its interests" or that it reacts to
"color as color" or to something "implied" by the color means either that the
behavior is not mechanical or else that it is interpreted in terms of the aims
and motives of an outside observer. The "interests" or the "something implied"
are either not present at all in the sense suggested by the language of the
quotations or they are present as future contingencies which have become
concerned in giving direction to present behavior, which is to say that the
behavior in question differs in an important respect from the mechanical
behavior of purely reflex responses.

That conscious behavior differs in a significant way from. other modes of
response is suggested further by a consideration of the different ways in which
the organization of the response is secured. In the case of reflex behavior the
organization is provided by circumstances or agencies that date back to a remote
past. The ability to execute adaptive movements of a reflex kind is a part of
the equipment with which we are endowed from the start. In conscious behavior,
on the other hand, the form of organization is dependent upon the exigencies of
the moment. When the need arises, different and relatively independent forms of
response or systems of discharge are brought together so as to constitute a
unified form of behavior which will further the adaptation of the organism.
These forms of response which furnish the material for the organized total
response

(
291) may have been acquired during the lifetime of the individual, and they
may be responses either for complex objects, such as houses, trees, and
automobiles, or for qualities like colors, sounds, and smells. Taken by itself
each of these forms of response is presumably a physiological unit, like the
reflex are, but in the experiential situation it is associated with other such
units so as to form a more complex total response. The form of organization for
this total response is not determined by a mechanism antecedently provided, but
has a peculiar flexibility, so as to suit the needs of the occasion. The process
of organizing the different systems of discharge into a unified mode of response
is directed towards the end of securing adaptation. That is, the activity is
neither predetermined by inherited structure nor left to the mercy of chance
association. The activity has a destiny and an aim, which means that there is
present some sort of selection from among alternative associations or courses of
action. In writing a letter, for example, or in untangling the line of our
fishing-rod, we are somehow controlled by an end, and at no point is it possible
to withdraw this control and leave the completion of the act to the mechanism of
the bodily reflexes. The organization of the activity must be provided for
continuously and is nowhere laid down before-hand by inborn connections within
the nervous system. It is this organization of relatively independent systems of
discharge, and not specific response as such, which constitutes the
characteristic feature of conscious behavior.

This contrast between conscious and reflex behavior, it will be observed,
presupposes the familiar doctrine that consciousness has its origin in the state
of inhibition or tension which arises when a stimulation calls forth a number of
conflicting responses. A new form of behavior appears, precisely because the
mechanism of the reflexes has proved insufficient for purposes of adaptation. A
new principle of organization or a new mode of procedure has accordingly become
necessary; and this new principle consists essentially in a mode of organization
that is directed or controlled with reference to an adaptation that is still to
he secured. But if a future adaptation is to determine the character of
behavior, it is necessary to take account of the meaning or adaptive value that
the nascent activities would have if they were released and allowed to run their
course. Regarded merely as mechanical reactions, these nascent responses are
more or less on a par and constitute an equilibrium of forces. From the
standpoint of possible or future adaptation, however, they may be widely
unequal. The possible future result of our acts, therefore, must he brought into
the present so as to provide the conditions for behavior that has reference to
these results; and this peculiar transfer of the future into the present is
accomplished in the conscious

(
292) situation. The various systems of neural discharge which enter into the
given situation and which have become severally organized as a result of
previous happenings, are, in a sense, a record of the past, but by virtue of
this fact they are likewise a forecast of the future. The flame, for example,
which has once burned the fingers, the rock which has once inflicted a bruise,
the lump of sugar which has once gratified the palate, work a change in the
nervous system, so that similar objects are greeted with a different organic
response on all subsequent occasions. When the flame or the rock is again
presented, the organism acts as though it were suffering the corresponding kind
of injury, before the injury has actually been inflicted; and in a similar way
the act of eating is rehearsed before overt action begins. By thus keeping a
record of the happenings which it undergoes, the nervous system is able to
report in advance, as it were, what may be expected of objects when they recur.
The flame is something that will burn the fingers, the rock is something that
will bruise, the sugar is something that will furnish nourishment. The
perceptions corresponding to these inhibited reactions embody the adaptive value
which these nascent activities would have if they were completed; they forecast
the possibility of future stimulations and thus transcribe or translate into
terms of present fact the conditions which must be taken into account for
further adjustment. The perceived object, accordingly, is the environment in the
guise of a condition for further activity. Generalizing this result, we may say
that all consciousness is behavior directed or controlled by the environment
with reference to a future result or a future adaptation,

As long as the individual is concerned with familiar objects or qualities,
conscious behavior is able to proceed with a minimum of attention. We avoid
obstacles in our path or seat ourselves on a chair with little effort in the way
of determining more in detail the conditions that must be taken into account.
Similarly the pencil on the table is picked up for purposes of writing, is put
into the pocket, or is pushed aside, according to the nature of the occasion,
but none of these possibilities is surveyed with care before the act takes
place. Yet the perceived object, as determined by the character of the neural
response, embodies certain possibilities or alternative forms of behavior, since
otherwise the response would have the fixed character of reflex activity, and
perception would not occur. Since consciousness is by hypothesis dependent upon
the presence of conflicting responses, some transformation of the object or
situation is necessary, some act of attention must occur. The precise nature of
the situation must be determined more adequately, and this need may result in a
more or less elaborate scrutiny. Before using the pencil to write, for example,
we may pause to note its length and to observe whether it

(
293) has been sharpened properly. The same process may, of course, occur as
a result of idle curiosity and with no thought of using the pencil for writing.
In this event the pencil controls behavior by holding out a promise of release
to certain activities of eye and hand. In any case the object or situation
controls behavior by bodying forth the results of activities which are as yet in
abeyance. And this interpretation applies equally, though perhaps less
obviously, to qualities like colors and sounds. The process by which we learn to
see colors is a process that involves a progressive building-up of complex forms
of response. But the colors doubtless feel different from the start,
which means that the different stimulations set off specific reactions. As an
example of such specific reaction, in exaggerated form, I may cite the classic
instance of the red rag and the bull. These reactions may tend to heighten or to
lower organic activity, i. e., these activities would be good or had if
permitted to run their course. It is in reactions of this kind, presumably, that
we may expect to find a clue to the explanation of the esthetic qualities of
colors. In the course of time a more or less elaborate form of response is built
up for a given color, as in the ease of more complex objects; and this response
has embedded in it a host of associations, so that the perceived color furnishes
the organism with a handle, so to speak, to a considerable range of further
possible adaptations. In the case of memory there is a partial reinstatement of
a previous response, but this reinstatement is of necessity fragmentary and
determined by the circumstances of the moment. The earlier situation is not
reinstated in all detail without modification; and, moreover, the recollection
is tinged by association with events which happened subsequently, but which were
future to it at the time. So far this description applies pretty directly to
other experiences as well; the peculiar quality of pastness is perhaps due to a
conflict between the physiological tendency towards total recall and the
activities of the present moment, which is reflected in the experience of the
event as irrecoverable, as past and gone. As long as we are on the plane of
remembering, the present situation is necessarily different from the previous
one; the greater our success in recalling the past the more complete is our
failure to reinstate it. At any rate, recollection, like perception, apparently
embodies or forecasts the outcome of nascent responses and thus shares in the
function of exercising control over further behavior.

The nature of this control has already been indicated. To give attention is
to respond to a result more or less dimly foreshadowed at the present moment;
the situation as given needs to be enlarged or transformed, and this opens the
way for the response of eye or ear or reflective thinking. Conscious behavior,
accordingly, is a constant search for new stimulations or a progressive
transformation of the

(
294) given situation so as to remold it nearer to the heart's desire. As
contrasted with reflex action, conscious behavior is essentially experimental;
its method is, at bottom, the method of trial and error. In listening to a
noise, for example, the given fact which directs farther behavior is indubitably
a noise, but the precise character of the noise, as the noise of a passing
street-car or the rumble of distant thunder, is still a matter for further
determination. The reference of the noise to a source is temporarily suspended;
the noise as heard is held on probation, as it were, pending the outcome of
further listening. As a consequence there arises a contrast between what is
given and what is still uncertain; and this contrast, it seems, is the basis of
the distinction between the object and the mental or psychical. As Dewey has
pointed out, the psychical in this sense is correlated with "intra-organic
events, adjustments within the organism, that is, adjustments of the
organism considered not with reference to the environment, but with reference to
one another."[6]
The psychical or
subjective is not a distinct entity or existence, but is a necessary incident,
phase, aspect, or "moment" of all conscious behavior. It is a name for any fact
or set of facts with reference to its status as material for more complete
determination in the interests of adjustment.

In conclusion I may add that the position so briefly and dogmatically
outlined is in entire agreement with the view that the problem of consciousness
must be attacked through a consideration of the facts of behavior. If, however,
a consideration of these facts is to be significant and enlightening, it is the
difference rather than the likeness between conscious behavior and mechanical or
reflex reaction that must be emphasized and interpreted. And this difference, as
I have ventured to urge, lies in the reference to future results or ends. An
interpretation along these lines enables us to avoid the pitfall of historic
dualism and gives promise of securing to intelligence its rightful place in a
world where ends or purposes are genuine and distinctive factors in the
processes by which living organisms maintain themselves and convert the
resources of a changing environment to their use.

B. H. BODE.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

Notes

Read at the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Columbia
University, December, 1916.

The Concept of
Consciousness, p.
180

The tendency to rule out significant differences is characteristic of
Holt's entire treatment. Thus the temporal order becomes just an instance of
the logical, timeless activity of the neutral entities; error is explained as
just a case of conflict or interference; and volition is a law and nothing
more. With all allowance for the ingenuity of treatment, there is considerable
ground for the suspicion that our problems are solved by being huddled out of
sight.

Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 300.

A First Book in Metaphysics, p. 262.

Essays in Experimental Logic, p. 227. Cf. also Dewey,
"Perception and Organic Action," this JOURNAL, Vol. IX., p. 645; and Mead,
"The Definition of the Psychical," Decennial Publications of the University
of Chicago, Vol III.

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